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TV Tropes

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    All the world's a stage,
    And all the men and women merely Players;
    They have their exits and their entrances,
    And one man in his time plays many parts,

    - William Shakespeare, As You Like It

The funniest thing about TV Tropes is the realization while reading them that people can be categorized in real life by personality types and these roles we play are not entirely within our control. We've been conditioned to play them. Funny for me as an American because we've been simultaneously taught that we're individuals with the freedom to be who we want to be. Why do we end up playing well trodden roles? Is it because it's easier or do we not have free will? [1] [2] [3]

There are various techniques for waking up and breaking out of patterned behavior put forth by various spiritual practices which are interesting

[1] Robert Sapolsky: You don’t have free will, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UX7bs4uvPyc

[2] Human behavior on social media is similar to collective behavior in nature [today's front page], https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33582795

[3] The Illusion of Free Will, https://www.samharris.org/blog/the-illusion-of-free-will

I found the whole "free will" discussion always somewhat strange. There seems to be some underlying assumption that anything short of being able to pull completely novel ideas from thin air is not free will. This seems odd to me, because everyone knows that our decisions and motivations are influenced by all sorts of things, both intrinsic and extrinsic. We are inspired by common culture and learned knowledge and we are influenced by memories of past events, emotional affinities which were also shaped by past events and for a good parts biological drives as well.

Nevertheless, within all those influences and based on the information we have, we are able to make a decision. I would still qualify that as "free will".

Exactly. Maybe it’s because I don’t have enough brainpower but I’m perfectly happy for society to determine parts of my I don’t put much value in. Clothing styles, haircuts, what music is on Spotify.

I recognize the value in being novel in those areas and I respect people who are passionate and put in the time, but I prefer to focus on the things that matter to me

I’m self aware enough there are millions similar to me in a lot of ways, I’m a product of my genome and society mostly, and marketing demographics work. But I take from that more of a stance of brotherhood. We are all on the same journey and we should find kinship and empathy in that.

I took a look at your comment history and matched you to Stepford Smiler

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StepfordSmiler

I’ll take it

I’m more than vulnerable to my close friends but I do enjoy everyone having a good time

The definition of free will is not a concrete thing. Part of the discussion is debating how to define it.

I say this because one view is in line with what you've described.

> Why do we end up playing well trodden roles?

One theory is that we're not aware nor can break free from the three major types of anxiety in life such as fate and death, emptiness and loss meaning, and guilt and condemnation.

We struggle to find peace with #2 and #3 given #1 will always be present in life.

Shakespeare knew this given how often he asked the question of "to be or not to be".

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/175141.The_Courage_to_Be

One aspect of "enlightenment" is to be free of these anxieties and emotions, not that they are gone, but that they are manageable within the context of the self and do not overwhelm.

Etymology of person:

> French personne, and its source Latin persōna (“mask used by actor; role, part, character”), perhaps a loanword from Etruscan 𐌘𐌄𐌓𐌔𐌖 (φersu, “mask”). In this sense, displaced native man, which came to mean primarily "adult male" in Middle English; see Old English mann. Doublet of parson and persona.

Person == mask == ego.

Ego, personality are the things we wear. Spiritual enlightenment in a certain way for certain paths is the "realizing/awakening" of a beingness that is separate from the ego/mask/persona. In that state one has the ability to detatch from any particular mask and become more fluid in their performance in the cosmic stage.

Very few actors can convincingly play someone very different from themselves and we tend to lionize those that can. Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Johnny Depp. It appears to me that most actors go to school to learn trope behaviors so they can become working actors that churn out mass market performances.

On more "high-minded" literary and media discussion sites, there are endless complaints about how TV Tropes ruined media criticism. On the one hand, they're not wrong. People will make idiotic statements such as "it's terrible because it has too many tropes" and then provide citations to all the tropes.

However, that site has introduced the idea of media criticism as a worthwhile endeavor in a way that most literature teachers cannot. Perhaps it's because people coming to TV Tropes do so when they're no longer fifteen and can visit on their own time.

It also has the appeal of being descriptive instead of being prescriptive. (Just like linguists for English vs French). Tropes aren't good or bad, they just are. And with time they become fashionable or unfashionable.

Traditional literally criticism always had a prescriptive feel to me. In the worst cases, it was just elitist hate.

Note that many artifacts considered masterpieces today were disregarded at the time of their making

Prescriptivist and often irrelevant. Even when it’s correct, it often isn’t on concepts high schoolers can relate to. More often, it feels like one of those hokey dream dictionaries applied to books.

If you want to destroy someone’s productivity for a day, link them to tvtropes.

Lampshaded in "Bert & Ernie Go to the Movies", where Big Bird receives a link to the website.

I seem to be alone, but tvtropes never does this to me. I'll read something I find interesting there, but rarely do I find the links intriguing enough to continue.

Clicking the wrong Wikipedia link can cause me to lose hours of my life, but never tvtropes. I feel like I'm missing some enthralling way to use the site. Maybe that's for the best.

You're not alone.

That this comment is in every discussion of TV tropes is a weird trope in and of itself.

Do we owe this to that Minecraft welcome message? Or is fundamentally one of those self-fulfilling prophecies? .

No. This saying about TVTropes definitely exists outside of any influence that Minecraft may or may not have had.

No; it was already an established meme. Minecraft got it from the wider culture, not the other way around.

Indeed, and here's the page for it: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/JustForFun/TVTropesWi...

Long term it saves time though. Once you start seeing how often TV/Movies lean on the cliches the site deconstructs it kind of ruins much of the mass produced low quality media these days. So you don't have to waste time watching them anymore.

This! I've noticed my watching habits have waned to almost no mass produced (visual) media. I'm no paragon of self-control, its just distasteful and not my first choice. It's all been demographically motived, paced, tested, optimized formulas that maximize ROI. For me the there is vibrance online that doesn't exist on TV. Regrettably, a lot of that is happening on TikTok right now, where authoring is so easy, all barriers removed. You don't have to show your face or use your real voice, the trends feel fresh and organic. There are lots of new voices, and the unstructured AI topic and audience clustering has helped some otherwise impossible communities to emerge. Short form video is wildly engaging, especially as a variety show. Sure tropes emerge and trends get tired, but the sheer diversity of iterations and reactions feels like some raw genesis energy.

But using tropes is not a bad thing in general, or what would you say? I think I kinda know what is low quality without looking at TV tropes beforehand.

Ofcourse not. Things become tropes for a reason.

And it is next to impossible to be original as a writer. Everything has already been done at some point in the past 5000 years of recorded history.

For a day? More like introduce them to TV Tropes and leave them addicted to the site for the rest of their life. If you're the kind of person who likes spotting patterns in works of fiction (like myself), you'll end up checking the site for every single of media you watch ever again, lol.

I introduced a friend to tvtropes while on IM. Later that day ...

> That's an amazing site, but I'm going to have to go to sleep now.

"Yeah it's fascinating isn't it.

> Night.

"Have you looked up 'Videodrome'?"

...

> You bastard.

It may take some time to explore the site, however I believe more in revealed preferences (here, the time spent) than in declared preferences ("omg my work is so important!")

My hypothesis is understanding the social fabric we live in is of the utmost importance, so maybe spending a day (or more, personally I spent weeks on tvtropes!) means that we unconsciously realize that, since it's more important than immediate productivity.

To say that differently, since we live a social life and interact with others, I think the long-term gains that come with a better understanding of the "common mental picture" allowing more fruitful interactions may be way more important than writing a few more lines of code.

In this instance, my journey ended up scrolling through all the Quora questions on the topic of Prince Valiant.

A true comedy gold mine IMO, is not page of, but the tropes of https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealLife

Quite like the site, it's a great source of facts and trivia about various mediums(including software). I actually learnt about demoscenes from this site

Poor Chuck, got a trope named after him after disappearing upstairs at the end of season 2 of Happy Days

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChuckCunninghamS...

Nice try, quantified, nice try

Next time.

Wow I should really start reading this Worm thing

Did you mean Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality?

Worm is legitimately one of the best pieces of webfiction and probably the best piece of superhero fiction (certainly better than pop fiction like the MCU, though perhaps works like Watchmen can rival it).

There's also https://allthetropes.org which came up after some kind of drama about censorship at tvtropes

I've never seen a list of every page allowed on one, but banned on the other though.

The split happened because TVTropes started to remove content (mostly sex-related) that advertisers weren't happy about.

https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Category:Banned_On_TV_Tropes

Interesting! Looks like it's mostly manga, anime, and fan fic although I was surprised to see Microsoft, Uwe Boll, and https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Wall_Banger were banned. https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Fashion seems out of place too

Years later, people begin emerging, blinking as the sunlight hits their eyes. "WHAT DECADE IS THIS?!"

Offtopic, the cookie screen on this site is one where you have to unconsent manually for each vendor

Block all 3d-party content and you won't have any such problems. The site still works as intended. Use this as the default for uBlock Origin and you'll be spared many if not most of these obtrusive dark-patterned "consent" things.

No, that’s not the point. It’s simply not compliant with GDPR, and they expose themselves to litigation with it.

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